I was Iman Gadzhi's #1 Closer. Here's Our $100M Sales Strategy

In 2021, I joined Iman Gadzhi's sales team at Educate as a high-ticket closer. When I first started, I was making about $7,000 a month, and within 60 days I was making anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 per month consistently in commission. And by year 2, I became Iman Gadzhi's highest cash-collected sales rep ever, collecting a little over $4 million for his company. And as many of you know from watching videos on this channel, I came to Iman's team already knowing how to sell. I mean, I had just spent 2 years at Alex Hormozi's gym launch, learning the scripts, learning the closing techniques, learning the frameworks. But what I haven't shared in those videos is that the time that I spent with Educate was the most valuable time that I've ever spent with any company, not only in the terms of the money I was able to make, but also the sales philosophy that I was able to learn, then take and apply to my own sales reps that I manage and train who have now collected tens of millions of dollars in sales. I am going to share that sales philosophy with you today through 5 principles that were passed down to me from other veterans on Iman's team. And when you understand all 5, you'll start seeing patterns in every sales call that I guarantee you have never been able to see before. These are the same principles that made Iman who he is today in the info space. And you know, what I learned at Educate was a completely different approach to selling high ticket than anything I've learned before. Gym Launch taught me how to sell, but Educate taught me the psychology of selling. There's a big difference, and that difference took me from being a good closer to someone who could consistently make $30K to $40K in commission every single month. And as always, let's get to the good stuff. First thing we'll talk about is stacking their interest before they show up. Now, most of you watching probably think that as a sales rep, your job starts when your prospect shows up to the Zoom call. That couldn't be anything more than wrong. And that is quite literally the definition of a fat, lazy closer. You know, at Educate, I learned that if you're waiting for your sales process to start, you know, when the prospect shows up to the call, you're already too late. All right. So let's break this down. Now, when someone goes and books a call, no matter what offer you're selling, they're at either one of 5 interest levels and it starts from the bottom. Now, those interest levels are either not interested, curious, generally interested, highly interested, or convicted. Now, most leads generally booked between the curious and generally interested box, meaning they're the type of people that says, hey, this looks interesting, let me check it out. In order to be a top 1% salesperson, you also need to understand marketing. If a lead books a call at, let's say, the general interest box and let's say their call is 2 or 3 days out. Every day that goes by without them consuming more content and information that's going to sell them into that call is going to cause their interest level to drop. It's the same reason why, let's say as a setter, you are on the phone with somebody and you set them for the call. They agree to show up for 2 p.m. tomorrow, but then 2 p.m. comes by and they don't show up to the call. I mean, it's not because the prospect says, you know what would be funny? Let me waste 10 minutes of my life on this phone call with this guy, Alex. And tell them I'm gonna show up for 2 PM tomorrow and then just no-show the appointment? It is because when you were on the phone with them, they were probably curious or generally interested. But hey, what most setters do is they get that call booked, forget the lead ever existed, and hope that they show up to the call. And what ends up happening is that curious prospect goes to the next day, they don't consume any information or any content, then their interest level drops from curious to not interested and they no-show. So how do we prevent this? It's called pre-call best practices. Having strong pre-call best practices which I'm about to explain what that looks like right now, helped me make so much more money in sales along with a ton of other sales reps in Learn Sales Group. Now, the consequences of not having good pre-call best practices is one of two things, or sometimes both. Either you're getting cold leads who show up to the call or maybe they just no-show, or B, you continue getting leads showing up to your call who are treating it as an education call, not as a buying conversation. And for most sales reps, including some type of pre-call best practice for yourself is literally the difference maker if you closing at 15 to 20% to 40 to 50%. It sounds crazy, but think about the logic of this. If you have leads who are not properly educated and consuming the right information before your sales call, what are the chances that they're going to show up and treat it as a buying conversation? You know, that's when you get the leads who show up and say, hey, no, I didn't watch the pre-call video. I didn't look at your guys' website. I just saw some random advertisement. So could you just explain who you are and what you do to me? That is not a buying conversation. And that's just somebody who's going to waste your time. Now, the way that we could fix that is by implementing the same pre-call best practice system that I use to educate. And what this starts off with is sending your prospect a text message the night before the call. And yes, I always send it towards the end of the day because that typically gives me the highest engagement. And this is all you have to say, right? So this is the exact copy that I would use in a text message I would send to prospects before the call. I'd say, hey Alex, I saw that we have a call tomorrow at 3 PM. Is there any questions that you have right now that would stop you from showing up tomorrow? Now, the reason why ask them a question instead of just saying, hey, quick reminder for 3:00 PM tomorrow, is because I'm trying to engagement bait them. I'm trying to bait them into sending me a response. Now, once they respond, whether they actually have a question or not, I am going to follow up with saying this. Awesome, Alex, listen, I have 2 to 3 pieces of content that I feel like would answer a ton of questions and give you a ton of clarity. Number 1 is I have a long podcast of Iman talking about his journey in SMMA. Number 2, I have a ton of testimonials of people who have crushed it by starting their own agency. And number 3 is I have a pre-call video that actually just screen shares exactly what you get within Educate. That way you have more clarity on the deliverables. Out of those 3, what do you feel like would be most helpful for you? Now, the reason why I send this is less about my sales knowledge and more about marketing knowledge. I know with every piece of content that the prospect consumes up until the sales call, their interest level is just going to stack. So hey, maybe they booked at curious or generally interested, but if I could get them to consume 2 2, 3, 4 pieces of content before the call, there is such a stronger chance for them to go from generally interested to highly interested to convicted. And that is where deals get done. Deals get done in the highly interested to convicted level of the buy box. Now, objection alert. You may be saying this, Alex, why do I need to send that? My sales team already blasts them with emails with different things to watch. Now, the reason why we want to have our own pre-call best practice is because number 1, you never know if a prospect is actually going to open those emails and watch them. Think about it. When was the last time that you went through your email box and opened up every unopened email? And number 2, the marketing team, what they're doing, it's called the spray and pray. They are most likely blasting the prospect with 10 emails of just an assortment of different content, testimonials, pre-call videos, hoping that one of them sticks. Let's hope that they watched at least one of them and it relates to the prospect somehow. Having our own pre-call best practice allows us to send customized content that actually relates to the questions that the prospect has or the problems they currently have with their business. And again, the whole goal of this is to stack their interest level. Let's use our pre-call best practice as a way to educate the prospect. That way they show up to the call in buying state and treat it as a sales-related conversation rather than the prospect booking at curious or generally interested. 3 days go past, the next thing you know, they either no-show the meeting or they show up, but they just want to treat it as, you know, a Q&A questionnaire for the next 30 minutes. Now, if you implement this, I I promise you your close rate and your show rate will make at least a 10% jump. Now, I think this real-life example will make a lot of sense to you. I don't know if you've heard Drake the rapper. He owns a $400,000 bed. And at first I thought this was a joke. So I looked into the type of beds that he purchased and it's this company called Hastens. Now, Hastens average bed sells from anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000. If I told you to buy a $70,000 bed right now, what questions would come up for you? I know for me, me, it's like, hey, why the hell is this bed $70,000? Is it made out of dragon hair? You know, am I going to have to replace the bed and buy another $70,000 bed? How does this work? You would never buy without getting those questions answered first. That's why Hastens has a sales process that they coined as the sleep experience. You show up in person to one of their stores, you get a salesperson assigned to you, you get to lay into the bed, and that salesperson is there to answer your specific questions through custom assets. And it's the same concept in sales. Custom content tailored to their specific questions will raise their interest level and bring them into buying state. Now, once they show up convicted, there's a specific way that we framed every conversation at Educate that honestly made closing deals easy. And that is, it is always about selling the transformation, not your program or product. Listen, at Educate, I learned that people don't book calls because they're interested in your program. They book calls because they're interested interested in a new way of life. Your first job is to help them see what that life actually looks like. You know, at Gym Launch, we basically sold systems in modules. Here's our client acquisition model. Here's how we run ads. Here's our fulfillment training. But the difference is at Educate, we sold a life transformation. You could quit your job, you could work from anywhere, and finally get to live the life that you want. That small shift in framing for myself of realizing, you know, my job is to sell and pitch the outcome that they're looking for rather than sell and pitch a product is a big catalyst that helped me go from that $7K month to making $30K, $40K per month a few months after. And this is the difference. When you sell programs and products, people think, is this worth the money? But when you sell a transformation, prospects think, is staying in the same place I'm at now worth giving up my dream life that I want in the future? Being a leader on a call didn't mean teaching prospects how to start an agency. It meant helping them realize that if they make this small change, they'll be able to show up to their daughter's soccer games, quit the job that they've been working for the past 5 years and they hate. Or, hey, be able to travel to Europe and work from anywhere in the world. And that is the difference. Your job is not to sell the program, it's to sell the outcome, the life transformation that they're looking for. And your pitch should tie into the same thing. It's not about listing your product or program benefits. It's about explaining how the deliverables and benefits of your product is going to help them achieve ABC transformation that they told you they're looking for. So take a look at your sales calls. Are you focused on selling your product and product demos and pitching slideshows, or you focus on explaining how your product is going to help them achieve the transformation that they're looking for? In fact, I remember I still have the recording to this sales call too, but I'll never show it to you because it was one of my first sales calls at Educate. So it probably could have been a little bit better. But I had a prospect on a sales call. He was an older guy, not really older, but in his mid-30s, worked a corporate job, was making a decent salary. And realistically, what he was looking for was to get out of that job, be able to have more remote freedom. He didn't have a family, didn't have kids at the time. So now the old me at Gym Launch would have busted out the slideshow deck and started explaining, you know, this is our client acquisition model. Here's how we're going to help you get clients and make money and quit the job and so forth. But what I learned at Educate is to ask two simple questions. And the first one was, hey, Mr. Prospect, you just explained you want the ability to quit your job and to be able to travel the world. And you need to be making about $10,000 to $12,000 a month to be able to do that. Do you mind if I ask you a question? And of course he said, yeah, no, Alex, go ahead. You know, we already had proper rapport built by that time. So I asked, listen, do you ever think you'll be able to achieve that outcome if you just stayed in the same position you're in now? Of course, he said no. And remember, your job as a salesperson isn't to assume the answer that they say. It's to ask the question anyway. So that they could say it out loud to themselves. And then I simply just followed up with, okay, cool. So what do you think you need to do? And those two small questions not only made him commit to the path and say, hey, that's, that's why I'm here. I need to do something different. I need to commit to something new. It also got him to dive deeper and open up about why he needs to make a change now. Then when I took it to the pitch, it was about selling the transformation, right? I just said, hey man, listen, $10,000 to $12,000 a month. That's not that much. That 6 clients at $2K per month, do you think you could achieve and get 6 clients? Once he said yes, I just went straight into the pitch and said, okay, cool, let me explain how we're going to help you get there. And from there I tied each pillar of the pitch to the outcome and transformation that the prospect was looking for. When you frame the conversation around life or business transformation, prospects start selling themselves on why they need to make a change. And at Educate, I started to understand that pretty quickly, that I created a specific question that helped me uncover that transformation information they were looking for. So if there's something you're about to write down, it should be what I'm about to say. And this is the 3 freedoms question, or you could call it the 3 buckets question if you're selling B2B. A majority of discovery frameworks teach you to ask, what is your goal with your business? Or what is your goal with starting an agency? What's your goal with getting into trading? And the problem with that is most people don't even know what answer to give you, right? They just know that they're unhappy. Think about it as a salesperson. You know, one thing I found out is that most prospects that spoke with when it comes to talking about their goals and the dream life that they want, it's really maybe the first or second conversation that they ever had with somebody speaking about that subject. And so most prospects, again, they don't actually know their goal. They just know they're unhappy and they want a change. And our job as a salesperson is to help them uncover the goals that they didn't even realize that they had. And so this is how I broke past it. This is how I helped them uncover those goals. It's through the Three Freedoms question. And what I'd say is, hey, Mr. Prospect, listen, I've done a ton of these calls and typically when I speak with someone in your exact position, meaning they're brand new into the space of starting an agency and they're looking to start now, it's usually one of three freedoms that they're looking for. Either A, time freedom, like the ability to create your own schedule. B is financial freedom. So wanting to make more money or location freedom. Out of those three, if you had to only pick one, which is most important to you? That is the start of me getting my, my shovel or my pickaxe and beginning to chip away and uncover the vision and the goals that the prospect didn't even know they they had. Once they say, hey, yeah, so actually my vision is just financial freedom, I follow up with, cool, what does that mean to you? Then they may say, well, you know, I want to be able to experience XYZ in my life, provide for my kids, set myself up for retirement. And I'd say, cool, how much money do you need to make to make that happen? Once they say, well, I'd probably need to make about $30,000 per month, then I'd go into, cool, would you ever be able to make that if you just stayed in the same position you're in now? And now if you've been paying attention, you could see the line that I'm starting to follow. I'm tapping into their goal or their dream state and figuring out what they really want and then asking them the right questions. That way they could realize, hey, if I want this transformation to happen, I need to make a change and I can't just stay in the same position I'm in now. And just remember, you know, the purpose of asking that question is to also dive deep. And of course, I teach that within Learn Sales Group where I train and place sales reps. For example, if someone says, I want location freedom, cool. What does location freedom mean to you? Well, I want to be able to travel the world. Okay, where would you travel to? Well, I want to travel to Bali. Have you ever been there? No. Okay, why not? Well, because my job is taking up— Okay, how much more money would you need to make so you could move to Bali and travel the world? A key thing that I live by as a salesperson, especially a closer, is our job is to knock on the door, open the door, and walk all the way through. And what a lot of salespeople do is they just knock on the door, aka they scratch the surface level, and then move on to the next subject. But all that to say, the 3 freedoms question, read about it. It turns abstract goals into emotional, tangible outcomes. That way, by the time you get to the pitch, you're not selling your product, you are selling their dream life. And listen, I just taught this exact framework to someone inside of our group, Samuel Yuzinski, and he made $37,000 this month in Canadian. He is from Canada, so about $28K USD, but pretty damn good. And guess what the 2 things that he implemented that helped the most? Number 1 was pre-call best practices, but number 2 was using this 3 Adam's question and helping them realize, hey, your goal is to sell their dream outcome and the transformation, not the product. And if you want the same one-on-one help that Samuel received, scroll to the description. There should be a link there. You could click the link, check out the video, and always book a call with me. So now that you have hopefully implemented these things, you should have your prospect opening up about their dream transformation. But honestly, that should be the easy part, in my opinion. What comes after is what probably derails, you know, 80 to 90% of sales sales calls. The closers, they try to close on emotion alone. But this is what I learned at Educate that changed how I view buyer psychology. People buy emotionally, then justify logically. To keep it real with you, you know, in my first month with Iman's team, I could not grasp this concept for the life of me. I was fumbling call after call until, you know, I started hitting up this old mentor of mine, Sean Bacchicini from Gym Launch, so he could break this down in more detail to me. And now at this point, I have taught this to about 200 closers, and I will start it with you. From seeing the inside of, you know, nearly over 100 different sales teams between closing and selling myself, but mainly sales management, I've seen a massive problem. Most sales reps sell on pain and logic, meaning they identify a problem, they quantify the costs, and then they show them the math. And at Educate, we were taught that people make decisions emotionally, then they compensate logically. Think of it this way. When you go to a store and you see a nice pair of shoes that you really want, the first thing that comes into your head before you buy it is probably like, oh, I really like these shoes, I like the color. Emotional, right? And then from there, we begin to justify why we're about to buy these shoes with logic and say something like, plus, you know, I really do need a new pair of shoes for the gym. These are pretty comfortable. I feel like I could run well in them. They're pretty light. You know what, let me go ahead and buy them. What you just did was justify the emotional decision that you're about to make with logic. And it's the same thing that buyers do on sales calls. So your job is not to convince somebody to buy with logic. It's to connect them to the emotion of their dream outcome using something like the 3 freedoms question. Make them realize that their current path will not get them there and make them commit to taking action today. From there, you want to position your offer and your pitch as the bridge that will get them from where they're at now to where they want to be. And that is the logic. And I'll give you an example. You know, I remember taking numerous sales calls. Iman attracted a lot of these prospects, a lot of single moms, which, you know, isn't a bad thing at all. But I do remember one in specific where I had this younger lady. She was a single mom. She only had one kid. And she really started opening up to me just as far as like, you know, hey, the better life that she wants, she wants to give her, you know, son a better life and, you know, be able to have more freedom and spend more time with them, take them out of daycare. And number one, I will say that it's important to be convicted in what it is that you're selling, or at least be convicted that this is the best first step that they need to take. For that reason, you know, sales is not manipulation. You're just guiding someone to make a decision that they already want to make. But anyways, those emotions ended up driving her decision to join. But before she gave me her credit card, she started asking all these very, very logical questions. How long will this take? What else is included? What if, what if I don't have the time? You know, those questions were not her backing out. It was her trying to logically justify the decision she was about to make. And most closers get this backward. They try to lead with logic by saying, here's the ROI, here's the timeline, here's the curriculum, here's the guarantee that we have. But the problem is the prospect is not emotionally connected to your product yet. So the logic just falls on deaf ears, you know, and that's when you get the, I need to think about it, or like, hey, let me chat with my wife about it, because there's no emotional driver to the conversation. So the correct order is emotion first and then logic second, meaning, hey, we're asking these discovery questions early in the call to really tap into their emotion, figure out where they want to go, what's stopping them from getting there, get some real commitment that they're willing to change. And then we're using our pitch as the logic, the driving factor for them to really understand what's included, the deliverables, and how that's going to help them achieve the outcome that they told you they want. If someone doesn't feel like they need your solution, no amount of logic will convince them. But once they're emotionally connected to their dream outcome, logic just seals the deal. And all I mean by that is as a salesperson, your job is to sell the sizzle, not the steak. But again, none of this works if you don't really believe in what you're selling. Conviction is the most important piece. And I will never forget what I was told on my interview for Educate. I remember being told, listen, Alex, I could teach you sales skills. I can't teach you to be convicted in the product. And it's very true. And that one insight is literally why some closers will make $5,000 to $10,000 a month on and off offer, while on the same offer there'll be a couple closers that are making $30K or $40K. Conviction sells. A convicted closer needs no structure. You know, I'm sure you could remember, you know, maybe a time where you convinced your best friend or your girlfriend or your mother to go to your favorite restaurant. It's not like you had some sales script or some structure right in front of you. You were just so convicted in that restaurant that you said stuff like, Mom, listen, we have to go here. It was the best food that I ever had. Ambiance of the restaurant was really I love the waiter. They were super nice. And the next thing you know, your confidence and conviction without the structure sold your mom to go to the restaurant. And it's the same thing on sales calls. You know, I remember when I got hired to Iman's team. Fun fact, I believe I was 1 out of either 2,000 or 3,000 applicants. Pretty much like 3,000 people applied for the closing position. They only hired 1 person. Anyways, the first stage of this entire process was doing like a Hunger Games styled interview, right? It was a group interview. They would have like 50 to 60 people inside of the group. They probably did a few of them. And then start pulling the best candidates into one-on-one calls. Anyways, I remember in my group interview there was tons of salespeople with really good experience, arguably people who were probably better at sales than me at the time or with more experience. And they all kind of took the same approach of like, hey, let me try and land this position by talking about all my accolades or how much money I've made, how I'm the top salesperson on the team. But I decided decided to take a different approach. I didn't lead with my stats from GenLaunch. In fact, I didn't talk about that at all. Instead, I just started talking about how convicted I am and how much I believe in Iman. And another fun fact, Iman was so small at the time. I think he had like 40K subscribers. I didn't even really know who he was that much. But for some reason, intuitively on that call, I saw all those people talking about their numbers and I was like, ah, all sound like the same things. Let me try something different. You know what? Hey man, listen, I am here because I really believe in Iman's mission. I believe in the direction he wants to go and the company and how he wants to change so many people's lives. Now, later on in the process, of course, they asked me questions about my numbers at Gym Launch and how well I was doing and so forth. But I remember Paul Daly, who was the CEO of Iman's team, telling me later on that that was the reason that he hired me. And that's when he told me, hey, man, listen, I could teach you how to sell, but I can't teach you how to be like truly convicted in what it is that we have going on here. You know, sales is just a transference of belief. You have one person, a.k.a. your prospect, who's showing up, you know, curious, maybe generally interested, questioning if this is a good fit for them. And what they're looking for from you as a salesperson or the closer is to really pour belief into them and be convicted in what it is you're selling. That way they could buy. Think of Alex Jones. I don't know if you ever heard of Alex Jones. This is a great example, though. He is the insane dude that goes on Joe Rogan's podcast, crazy conspiracy theorist. One of the things that he says, he'll talk about how the world is flat. And I think we're all educated enough to know that the world is not flat. But if you hear Alex Jones talk about how the world is flat, he says it in such a way with so much conviction that he will make you question your own beliefs. I'll go from watching one of his videos and be like, you know, the dude does have a point. You know, when you do look from the top of the mountain, the world does look flat. And that is the way you want to be on your sales calls. You want to speak in such a way and pitch with such conviction and be able to look a prospect in the eyes and say, listen, man, this is the best next step that you need to take in a in a way that makes them question their own beliefs. If you could transfer that belief over to prospects by being convicted and believing in your product, people will buy without you needing to objection handle, without you needing to learn how to objection handle, and without you having to be a master at sales. Now, a question that you may have is like, Alex, how could I build my conviction in what it is that I'm selling? You know, and what I'll say is this, is a lot of people get conviction wrong. They make you think that conviction means that you need to believe your product, your service, whatever it is, will change a person's life. And it's just not true at all. You need to reframe your mind in what being convicted means. All it means is that you need to truly believe that this is the best next step that the prospect should take. So, hey, I'm going to spend my time on the sales call asking you good questions, finding out where you want to go, what's stopping you from getting there, what you've tried, what went wrong. But all of that just so that I could confidently tell you, Listen, based off where you're currently at now, this is the best next step that you could take. And here's why. Now, other ways you could build conviction, because there is other ways to listen. If you're selling on an offer, like start looking at testimonials of people doing well. I can't tell you how many times I'd go sometimes weeks or months without looking at testimonials of the products that I'm selling. The second that I did, or the second that I reached back out to old prospects that I closed and hear, hey, they were able to quit their job or they were able to transform their business. They went from being in the negative as a gym owner and now they're making a lot more money and able to take care of their family. All that stuff helped me really build up conviction in my product. But more than anything, it was reframing my mind in what I told you, as in, hey, it's not about believing this is the end-all be-all best product in the world that's going to make them a billionaire. It's just believing that this is the best next step that they should take based off your prospect's current situation. Now, the reason why these principles stand the test of time is because they're rooted in human psychology. They follow the natural way that people actually make buying decisions. And I love making content like this because I do know that it'll genuinely help you. But I'm also not dumb. I understand a lot of you still may be on the point where you haven't been able to break past that $10,000 to $20,000 per month mark with high ticket sales. And that's why I made this free 5-hour course that I'm going to link directly below the description that talks about everything you need to be a top performing closer and start making at minimum $10,000 to $20,000 $10,000 per month consistently with remote sales. Scroll below, click the link in the description, and as always, once you learn to sell, you will never starve. Thanks.